Reducing the Harm from a Stroke

Stroke is in the top five leading causes of death in the United States killing thousands of people, especially more common in older people. It is a common brain damage that may be causes by different factors such as a blood clotting or other obstruction in an artery, which is called ischemia. Or also, it can be causes by rupturing an artery, called hemorrhage. Throughout the years, medicinal treatments have been increasing and getting better, and cures for major diseases have been found. This has been done throughout many trial and experimental procedures.

One immediate treatment physicians can perform on patients with ischemia, is to give them a drug called tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) which breaks up blood clots and prevents the obstruction of blood flow in the arteries, within 3 hours of getting a stroke. This can be very helpful for the patient because it can get rid of all the blood clots cause by the stroke, but at the same time is such a risky treatment in a way that doctors won’t be sure if to give this drug to the patients unless they perform an MRI to determine if it’s a ischemia or hemorrhage stroke.

My question is, would you let one of your relatives receive this drug if physicians are not one hundred percent sure if it will work effectively or not, if they are not putting the patients life on risk? Performing an MRI on a patient that has had a stroke it’s a lengthy procedure, and in order for the tPA and other treatments to be more effectively they have to be within a short period of time such as also cooling the brain to prevent a brain damage right after a stroke, or exposure to cannabinoids which minimizes also the damage cause by strokes.

Even though hemorrhage is a less common type of stroke, it is very fatal and giving the patient tPA, the risk of making the hemorrhage worse is small compared to the hope of alleviating ischemia. This is basically like tossing a coin if an MRI is not performed in order to figure out if the patient had an ischemia or hemorrhage. If you give the medication to patient with ischemia, the chances of alleviating them will be higher than if it had a hemorrhage. What would you let the physician of your relative with a stroke do in such a case like that?

This video shows some benefits and risks of the drug tissue plasminogen activator. 

Alcohol and Alcoholism

Now-a-days people in our society, especially younger generations, adolescence from high school and college think that drinking alcohol is nothing more than a pleasant way to relax. What they don’t know is that people with alcohol use disorders to excess, endangering both themselves and others. As mentioned by the author, alcohol is the most common of the abused drugs and the research on it is extensive, that’s why is treated separately from the other drugs.

Most adolescence think that consuming alcohol its better way of having fun than performing a sport or exercise activity, which might be somewhat true, if it is consumed with moderation not in excess and not consumed daily. This is because alcohol will bring health implication in the short and long-term if over consumed.

If alcohol is used in large amounts, it will not only cause health problems to you, such as the destruction of neuron cells, it can block activity at the glutamate receptors, and it can also increase the stimulation at dopamine receptors in the nucleus accumbens. It might also cause problems if you have never consumed alcohol before, such as causing a car accident if you drive under the influence of alcohol, or your behavior might change from a passive to a more aggressive person. There are factors that will help to identify those who are at risk of alcoholism, for example identify the young men who are not yet problem drinkers and compare those whose fathers were alcoholics to those who have no close relative with an alcohol problem. Those whose family has a strong tendency toward alcoholism, researchers expect that many of the sons of alcoholics to be future alcoholics themselves.

If alcohol consumption can be prevented, especially during pregnancy, you will save yourself from many health implications not only for yourself but for the baby too, such as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS/FAE) which causes facial and heart deformities usually below average IQ or mental retardation.

The Blood-Brain Barrier

A big concern in medicine studies is finding a way of how the blood-brain barrier can be protected from malign viruses and diseases, and how special medication can be passed through that barrier to treat the disease, without the medication being rejected by the own barrier. The blood-brain barrier is essential because it works just as the immune system, it protects the blood and brain by identifying viruses, diseases, and harmful chemicals and getting rid of them. This is such an important part of our system because, would you imagine yourself without a blood-brain barrier? How would our body protect our brain from harmful chemicals and viruses?

            The blood-brain barrier is being protected by endothelial cells that form the walls of the capillaries. One of the top ten leading diseases in the United States, in this case Alzheimer’s disease, attacks the epithelial cells lining the brain’s blood vessels by shrinking them, and introducing harmful chemicals into the brain. This barrier carries the brain’s main fuel, which is glucose, as well as amino acids. It would be of great help for scientists to find a way of treating this disease through the blood-brain barrier, because not only the disease might be reduced or completely be cured, but it could also help them figure out ways of introducing medications to treat other problems, such as brain cancers.

            According to an article from Medical News Today, scientists have found a new method for efficiently transporting antibodies across the blood-brain barrier in preclinical mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease. This transfer of antibodies through the blood-brain barrier was associated with a marked improvement in amyloid reduction in the brain of the mouse model. Per-Ola Freskgard, the Preclinical Project Leader for this technology platform at Roche pRED, said that "if we are able to clinically validate the preclinical results observed with the Brain Shuttle technology, it could lead us to a way to test investigational drugs in a variety of brain disorders".

 

New method for efficiently transporting antibodies across the blood-brain barrier in preclinical mouse models of Alzheimer's disease